Alcohol: The World's Favorite Drug

Griffith Edwards's Alcohol is a short, ambitious overview of the "the world's favorite drug." He begins on the molecular level and ranges wide, with peeks at alcohol's role in religion, in secular mythology, as a medicine, a disease, source of misery and elation, and something to be legislated and taxed. Edwards, though a stiff stylist, can be interesting, as when discussing the search for a "sovereign" remedy for alcoholism, the "disease concept" of alcoholism, the relative efficacy of Alcoholics Anonymous, and especially how cultural expectations affect the behavior of inebriates. The book's brevity is problematic: a history of England's 18th-century gin epidemic raises more questions than it answers; his statement that AA "probably works, in some way or other, for not less than 50 percent of [those] who make contact with it" needs annotation; and his essay on America's Prohibition era is annoyingly sketchy. Edwards, commendably, maintains a rigorous objectivity throughout. --H. O'Billovich